As influenza and COVID-19 infections spread, facilities for people with disabilities are also struggling to respond. Facilities for people with severe intellectual disabilities have found it difficult to take precautions, and there have been cases of infections spreading among users and staff.
As Japan marks five years on Wednesday since its first confirmed case of COVID-19, government data show that over 70 million people in the country are estimated to have contracted the virus as of March last year, while total deaths stood at 130,000 as of last August. While yearly deaths have declined since peaking during the Omicron variant surge in 2022, fatalities remain significantly higher than for influenza, with the virus continuing to spread seasonally in summer and winter.
A series of avian influenza outbreaks has hit poultry farms in the central Japan prefecture of Aichi, where the prefectural government announced newly confirmed infections for the second straight day Friday. The prefecture confirmed infections of highly pathogenic bird flu at two poultry farms in the city of Tokoname. About 177,000 laying hens raised at the two locations will be culled.
The number of influenza patients reported at designated medical institutions across Japan at the end of the year hit the highest level since comparable data became available in 1999, the Japanese government said Friday. It marked the 10th consecutive week of increase and a 1.51-fold rise from the week prior, and there were shortages of some of the medications used to treat influenza.
An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has been confirmed at a poultry farm in the town of Yachiyo, Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, the prefectural government said Sunday.
Influenza is on the rise across Japan, with weekly case counts increasing in all 47 prefectures. The National Institute of Infectious Diseases and other organizations say about 5,000 hospitals and clinics across the country reported seeing 211,049 flu patients in the seven-day period up to December 22.
Concerns are growing that measles infections may become widespread in Japan as many other countries have been hit by outbreaks.
This year’s number of reported patients in Japan had reached 11 as of Monday, already surpassing the full-year numbers for 2020 to 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nine people at evacuation center in Ishikawa were infected with norovirus and two people were infected with the new coronavirus.
They were all in the same evacuation center. After receiving treatment at the hospital, he was placed in isolation.
Mayor Shigeru Sakaguchi of Wajima City, Ishikawa Prefecture, announced on January 7th that one victim of the Noto Peninsula earthquake who had evacuated to an evacuation center in the city had died of hypothermia.
Japan’s health ministry said Wednesday that a man in his 30s who was living in Saitama Prefecture near Tokyo has died of mpox, the first such death in the country.
Japan’s first case of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, was confirmed in July last year, and there have been 227 confirmed cases in the country as of Dec. 3, according to the ministry.
Barrier Free Japan